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I'm the secretary for my university Chess Club. I need to be able to send emails to ~70 people about once or twice a week (possibly with attachments and using BCC).

I have set up a Gmail account for this purpose. However, it thinks I'm sending spam so is blocking the emails. Looking at the Google guidelines, it seems that I should make a Google Group. However, that would require people to signup for a Google Account and then sign up to the Google Group.

I need a simple and free way to send mass emails to everyone who is on the Chess Club email list. Can I do this with Gmail? What is the best option?

Related but different: How do I set up a small mailing list / newsletter with Gmail?

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Was it rejecting your emails because of the volume of emails, or the content of the email? Do you want everybody to be able to email everybody else? How private does this have to be , would twitter work for most reminders? – mhoran_psprep Feb 25 '12 at 12:43
I don't want to force people to sign up to twitter/google/facebook etc. I want to use BCC so I'm not sharing the entire list of people's emails. The actual email doesn't need to be private, just the list of people who are receiving the messages. – Annan Feb 25 '12 at 15:46

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

This is how I understand your requirements:

  • One way communication. You send everybody an email with a short message, and an attachment.
  • They can't see other peoples email address, because you use bcc. So they can't send emails to each other
  • You don't want them to have to register for anything, like Twitter or Facebook.

It looks like you will need to use something like mailchimp, If you are getting rejected by Gmail.

I am not sure why Gmail would reject your emails because 70 people 2x a week is not a large volume.

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MailChimp method also need one-time verification.. – Sachin Shekhar Feb 26 '12 at 20:25
I only suggested mailchimp because of the question said that Gmail was calling the email spam. The amount of mail being sent seems low. Maybe the problem is that some people receiving the email are finding it in their spam folder. If this is the case the problem is in the content of the email. – mhoran_psprep Feb 26 '12 at 20:49
up vote 1 down vote

If the email content doesn't need to be private, then another option is to set up a blog with an email subscription option - you can use Feedburner to do this. And if you use Blogger for the blog, the follow-by-email gadget makes this even easier to set up. (Ref: http://blogger-hints-and-tips.blogspot.com/2011/03/follow-by-email-gadget-easy-way-to-add.html)

When people join the chess club, you could enter their email address into the subscribe box. Feedburner will send them a one-time verification message with a link they have to click. This verification step lets Google know that you're not a spammer. After epople have verified, it sends them an email every day that you make a post.

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up vote 0 down vote

I think you might of had your email blacklisted, http://www.rackaid.com/resources/gmail-blacklist-removal/

Gmail allows you to send BCC to 70 people. My guess is that your email has been marked as spam by one of your friends.

I would try removing the blacklist or send your messages from a different email.

Gmail allows you to build a contact group so you don't have to keep track of 70 emails.

I have had success with Gmail's built in contact lists and sending to 70+ people over BCC without getting blacklisted. So your request is possible using the built in features of gmail.

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